<font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Back in late 2009 I contracted for commercial Theme site where they had two forms of tracking, one was via Google Analytics and second one hidden to check if the Theme was purchased or downloaded from "" sites. In matter of months they went from "all star" to "where are the customers" type of thing. Long story short users don't like to be tracked one way or another and honestly I don't blame them at all. Permission or not "touching things that should not be touched" are never good idea.</font></font></font><div>
<font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">If one wants to track and get the general ideas where the Themes go, simply use your very own GA. There are many things you can do with Analytics beyond how many visitors one have on monthly basis. Not 100% accurate, but it does get close.</font></font></font></div>
<div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">This is from my marketing perspective. Privacy is issue everywhere nowadays and once this leaks to the public, your sales will go down to toilet, please believe me on this.</font></font></font></div>
<div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Imagine this title on a popular WP News sites "<i>Example Theme Site Now Tracks User's Behavio</i>r".</font></font></font><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> warez</span></div>
<div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Cheers,</font></font></font></div><div><font color="#333333"><font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Emil<br>
</font></font></font><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Bruce Wampler <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:weavertheme@gmail.com">weavertheme@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
As the author of a popular WordPress theme, I would like to add my strong agreement with the opt-in only policy for trackers such as PressTrends.<br><br>I find Trent Lapinski's arguments for the harmlessness of opt-out tracking self-serving and disingenuous. Anyone with the least bit of understanding of the difference between opt-in and opt-out, and how that affects user privacy, would never argue for allowing any kind of automatic or opt-out tracking of any kind in any repository based WordPress theme. It is simply the wrong thing to do.<br>
<br>Maybe PressTrends isn't any different in concept or privacy issues than Google's tracking code, or even WP stats, but both of those are opt-in - they don't happen unless the web admin actively adds them.<br>
<br>Personally, I believe any sort of tracking should require permission from the visitor to the site - but that is a much larger battle.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br>Bruce Wampler<br>
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